Stoet bepakte mensen 1880 - 1936

Curator: Looking at this print, I am immediately reminded of images of refugees that saturate today’s media. The body, in its most vulnerable form, rendered with an almost violent yet meticulous detail, becomes an inescapable political symbol. Editor: Oh wow, I see it. It is like a slow motion dust cloud of…displaced lives. Sort of haunting and yet hopeful, in a bizarre way? Curator: What you’re responding to is, I think, connected to the long lineage of representing migration as an inherently political and social crisis, which dates back centuries. The work we are looking at, “Stoet bepakte mensen,” which translates as "Procession of Packed People," by Fons Van der Velde, etched sometime between 1880 and 1936, echoes similar themes. This etching presents us with a landscape overwhelmed by human figures. The figures themselves seem burdened. Editor: Yeah, “burdened” is a great word for it! Like, each figure is practically collapsing under the weight of… life, you know? All huddled together for warmth, for safety. What's really wild is how the figures become almost indistinguishable, forming a single mass. Curator: Exactly! It blurs individual experience, presenting instead a collective portrait of movement and perhaps even desperation. How does the artist convey this effect through the medium? Editor: The monochrome etching—it almost gives it this timeless quality, like it could be from any era of human struggle. The landscape is vague, a barely-there backdrop that amplifies the feeling of universality. Curator: Right. The etching technique also allows for a detailed yet ghostly image, emphasizing both the realness and the ethereal nature of displacement. Editor: There’s a strange beauty to it too, like a charcoal drawing you find tucked away. A beautiful, sad poem, sketched onto paper, capturing that ephemeral moment when lives are uprooted, but still pushing on together. Curator: This image urges us to acknowledge not just the spectacle of displacement but also the persistent struggles embedded in human history, revealing uncomfortable truths about power dynamics. Editor: I walk away from this feeling that we are all part of this procession, somehow, in some way. It dissolves the barrier between “us” and “them.”